1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the field of multimedia. Specifically, the present invention relates to indexing multimedia information streams including audio and video streams.
2. Description of Related Art
With the rapid convergence of computer and telecommunication technologies, the time-based continuous digital media stream, such as motion video, becomes the major source of traffic on the information superhighway. Because of the isochronous nature of this media stream and its large volume, it is important to provide the means to effectively transport, parse, and deliver this information efficiently. Unfortunately, prior art media information streams, including audio and video streams, are opaque in their content. These streams are intended strictly for direct delivery to some type of output device, such as a display screen or audio speaker. Although these streams are digital, there is no conventional way to decode the content of the stream and learn any more than the color and/or the intensity of a collection of pixels. It would be advantageous to determine the presence of a particular object of interest in a media stream, such as a character, shape, or identifiable object. This presents a general challenge in providing the video services that is not met by the prior art.
Some prior art systems use a technique sometimes called hot spots. This technique defines regions of a video stream at some time in the video stream. These regions or hot spots are essentially soft buttons on the video display that can be activated in a manner similar to the prior art use of icons. This technique, however, does not associate objects in the video stream in a manner useful for searching or scanning the video stream. Further, hot spots typically do not support audio. Other prior art techniques provide a means for including paragraphs of text that describe a video stream. Again, however, this technique does not effectively support a searching or querying function.
Thus, a means and method for indexing a multimedia stream to provide information regarding the content of the stream is needed.